It is such a pleasure to read outside during beautiful summer afternoons, while breezes flicker the leaves of Cottonwood trees. This past week, I completed Christina Baker Kline’s historical fiction A Piece of the World, inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World” (1948). His famous painting of a stark house on the hill, a crippled woman clutching the ground in a pale pink dress. It is a portrait of a real person, Christina’s Olson, who lived in a family farmhouse depicted in his landscape.
Christina Baker Kline’s researched and visited points of interest to bring this story to life of Christina Olson and Andrew Wyeth, their friendship during his summers spent in Maine. The story establishes Olson’s relationship with the painter, but Baker Kline also conveys the struggle with Christina’s rare genetic disease, now known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), which caused her to lose the use of her arms and legs as she aged. The book portrays Christina’s resilience and strength in continuing her daily activities of caring for her family home, aging parents, and older brother, Alvaro. As Kline commented in her Author’s notes, she had “a determination not to be pitied.”
We read through the character’s debilitation as she ages, crawling and dragging herself to visit a friend, or up the stairs on her elbows to care for her mother. Her perseverance was noble, as well as painful to read about.
In Wyeth’s painting, “Christina’s World”, he portrays Christina as a younger woman, even though she was 55 when he painted her, symbolizing the resilience he admired in his friend. He painted and sketched the Olson farmhouse, Christina, and her brother, Alvaro, as well as the landscape of Maine’s coast.
When I read A Piece of the World, I did not realize that it would make a personal connection with me. I discovered an emotional crossing between art and literature. Thirty-three years ago, my sister-in-law, Laurel, died from Lupus, also a crippling disease. I spent some time with her a few years before she passed, and after reading this book, I remembered a framed poster of Christina’s World, which hung in her living room. Then, she told me how much she loved this painting because she felt Andrew Wyeth had captured her own suffering.
Although CMT and Lupus are different, the first being a genetic mutation, Lupus is an autoimmune disease; however, patients experience the inability to use their muscles and motor skills, over time becoming more crippling. I can understand why Laurel identified with Christina’s contorted figure, hands clutching the dirt, distorted arms as she drags her legs behind her, always with her beloved home in the distance.
Baker Kline’s novel is more about Christina’s fierce independence, to the point that she pushes people away; we follow her persistence in preserving her family home and its history. Her life was difficult, especially when it came to performing daily activities like baking bread, cooking for her family, and sewing, as well as seeking friendships without sympathy. She wanted to be accepted for herself.
The book was published in 2017, twenty-four years after Laurel passed away. I think she would have enjoyed reading A Piece of the World.
Have you read or seen a work on art that inspired a connection between art and literature? Please feel free to leave your comments below.
